The Tears of Angels

I’m looking up at the sky.  How many stars can I see in the night?  Dozens?  Hundreds?  A thousand upon a thousand?

My cell phone is screaming at me. An Amber Alert. Be on the lookout for a nine-year-old girl that may have been abducted in Lake George by someone in a white van, driving southbound on I-87.

And in the back of my mind, half of me is thinking that the person is in danger and hopefully can be rescued. And the other half of me senses that this message isn’t going to work. That the child may be already dead.

Later that day, my worst fears were realized. A nine-year-old girl’s body was found in Ticonderoga – northbound from the original Lake George location. And her father is now in custody as the prime suspect in the child’s death.

And if every star in the sky were the dim tears of an angel’s cries… the thought that another young soul would lose their only chance to live a full and complete life, to experience adulthood and parenthood and grandparenthood…

I keep thinking about those stars in the sky.  How many times, as a child, did I look out the window of our mobile home, wondering if those stars were the tears of angels, crying over the children who could not defend themselves against the abusers and the bullies and the tyrants. That someday I would join those stars as another child punished for the sin of existing at the wrong time.

And the abusers and the bullies and the tyrants used all the excuses in the world.  I was drunk and didn’t realize what I had done.  I was overtired and I just wanted the kid to shut the hell up.  This was how I was brought up and I turned out okay.  The kid just needs some tough love.  I forgot to take my medicine and I wasn’t myself. I watched Fox News too many times.

And even after all that… it might be too late.  Even if someone is able to survive the horrible beatings and assaults and violations… their lives are never the same.  Their souls are damaged.  Their hearts are wrecked.  It’s as if they survived a mortar blast.  Post-traumatic stress disorder without ever having to enlist.  Familial conscription.

And the angels cried from heaven.

I know these names.  Lisa Steinberg.  Xstacy Garcia.  Kali Ann Poulton.  Todd Preville, Jr.  Tami Lynne Tinning and her brothers and sisters.  David Smith and Alexander Smith. Kenneth White.  Parkland. Uvalde. Sandy Hook. And now we reluctantly add Melina Galanis Frattolin, a nine-year-old girl from Quebec, murdered and left for dead in Ticonderoga.

I know the names.  I shouldn’t know the names.  I shouldn’t know them for anything other than being children whose lives were cut short in madness.  Families torn apart.  Little white caskets at a hastily-arranged memorial service.

And the angels cried from heaven.

There were nights, when I was a child, that I wondered if the angels saw the abuse I went through and asked God to intervene.  Or maybe God was busy trying to intervene for someone whose was in more danger.  I don’t know.  I gave up on trying to figure out God’s motives.  They make no sense to me.  They never will.

Last night, I looked up the piece of shit who is now in custody regarding the death of his daughter. I found his professional page and his job as a coffee importer. I saw his biography and the relationship he had with his child in it. I saw his YouTube page – and inbetween the reels of poured coffee videos was a shot of Frattolin and his daughter, both of them sledding down a snowy hill. The video features the song “Mockingbird” by Eminem, with the lyrics “Now hush little baby // don’t you cry // everything’s gonna be all right // stiffen up that upper lip, baby I told you // Daddy’s gonna hold you through the night.” A tender video made all the more sinister with yesterday’s repugnant actions.

What can we do in moments like this? We offer thoughts and prayers, but thoughts and prayers won’t bring her back from this horrible finality. We lit a candle in the window, we turn on a porch light and let it glow all evening.  We hope that it brings faint solace to those in agony, solace in memory of young boys an girls who never got a chance to experience another Christmas, or another day of kindergarten, or another sunrise or another snowfall or another birthday or another rainy day or another day.

And we watch as the inevitable villains take Melina’s death and turn it into some cudgel for their own twisted, perverted agenda. Using her death as some sort of bigoted, racist, hateful screed against one race or one religion or one ethnicity or one nationality. That Melina’s existence on this planet was that her death could be exploited by these racist banshees. And we have to avoid that mildew-coated noise somehow.

And we hope that someone out there will get the message that this has to stop. Right now. We end the excuses now.  We find help.  We offer support.  We put aside judgment and offer assistance.  We don’t treat Child Protective Services as some sort of monster that comes and rips children away from families for the tiniest of reasons.  We don’t treat support groups as some sort of admission of awful parenting.  We look towards protecting children, rather than perfecting cover stories of what happened to children. We pass sensible gun control laws. Private citizens don’t need to own AR-15’s and bump stocks and high-capacity magazines.

I don’t want another candlelight vigil.

Because another candlelight vigil means that another young soul was taken to Glory.

And another candlelight vigil means that the angels are crying once more.

And the fact that I’ve repurposed a blog post from eleven years ago to represent the horrifying infanticide that took place last night … it just means that nothing has changed in all that time.